


Being Dean Winchester

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dual Consciousness, Episode Related, F/M, Het, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Control, Mind Sex, Mindfuck, Monsters, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, One Night Stands, Psychic Bond, Sharing a Body, Vessel Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of hell. I can throw you back in."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Who the fuck was this bitchy "warrior of God" doing talking to him like that? Fuck <i>Cas-tee-el</i> and his dumbass trench coat and abrasive motherfucking attitude.</p><p>Dean was <i>done</i> with this shit.</p><p>***</p><p>Wherein a monster of the week steals the essence of Castiel's vessel, so he must use Dean, recently raised from hell, as a vessel instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [habitatfordeanwinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/habitatfordeanwinchester/gifts).



> Prompt-fill: "so like a month ago i had this dream where cas was still a full angel and had to temporarily use dean as a vessel because something happened with jimmy on a hunt or something and they needed to find somewhere to put him until jimmy was usable again and they just kind of shared control of dean. i realize this presents all sorts of problems logistically but if you wrote it i would read the shit out of it."
> 
> Set in early season 4, between/around episodes 2 and 3. 
> 
> This is what a [Devourer](http://the-random-site.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/MM35_PG581.jpg) looks like, and here are its [stats](http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Devourer) if you're curious. Obviously I took some liberties with the D&D lore in relation to angels and vessels.
> 
> Title refers to the film _Being John Malkovich_.

_"You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of hell. I can throw you back in."_

Who the fuck was this bitchy "warrior of God" doing talking to him like that? Fuck _Cas-tee-el_ and his dumbass trench coat and abrasive motherfucking attitude.

Dean was _done_ with this shit.

One minute, the guy was telling him he was something special, something worth saving. The next, Dean was an insolent child to be chastised.

The only difference between Castiel and any other of the big bads Dean fought on a daily basis was that Dean still didn't believe the dude even really existed, let alone was a _real angel_ , let alone was on the next rung down from God Himself in the beaurocratic hierarchy of heaven.

Still, those words kept ringing in his ears. _"You should show me some respect."_

Dean scoffed while driving, thinking back to that dream. He wasn't even sure if it counted as a dream, because Cas had _been there_ , really fucking _been there_ , like it was real, like Dean had been completely conscious in the dream itself.

He had enough trouble trying to figure out what was real and not real without celestial interludes occurring in his sleep.

They were headed to some hick town in Ohio, driving a straight shot through I-70, Sammy asleep next to him with his face pressed against the glass and an open book on his chest.

Dean was beginning to get their cases mixed up, like his head wasn't back in the game yet. From moment to moment, he would convince himself that none of this was real, that it was just another torture device of Alastair's, making him believe that he'd been worth being dragged out of hell by, of all things, an _angel_.

An angel who looked him in the eye, right fucking _through him_ , and said shit like, _"You don't think you're worth saving, do you?"_

Because really, _fuck_ that guy.

Of fucking course Dean wasn't worth saving. Who was he, anyway? Just some dude with a GED, a felony's worth of identity theft under his belt, and enough Daddy issues to make Freud cringe.

So no, he had no fucking clue what they were going to Ohio for. He could barely keep track of one minute to the next, but at least he had Sammy and Baby and Bobby. He had the highway roadmap of the great US of A in his head and a warped AC/DC cassette in the player.

Even if all of this was just a little game of Alastair's, Dean would enjoy it, as brief as it would be in the eternity that each moment stretched while he was in hell.

At least, that was what he told himself to stop his hands from trembling.

***

It turned out to be something called a _Devourer_.

When Sam was explaining it in the car, it sounded pretty cut and dry. They didn't need anything special to kill it, no spells or incantations or magical weapons, just plain ol' brute force.

Dean liked things he could kill with brute force.

That is, until he saw what a Devourer actually was.

The thing was nine feet tall, covered in slick pale skin, pieces of mummified flesh hanging off of it in dripping strands, hands and feet the size of dinner plates with webbed, razor sharp claws.

The worst part was its mouth. When it opened, it just _kept opening_ , wider and wider, sharp teeth parting as it slowly leaned in toward Dean, head bobbing left and right with inhuman, jagged movements, black beady eyes boring holes into Dean's soul.

Its chest cavity was open and hallow, exposing a tattered ribcage. Floating inside of it was a lavender ball of light, bouncing and spinning around, pressing against the edges.

Dean couldn't help but think that maybe the ball of light was trying to escape.

Thankfully, they were in an abandoned warehouse east of Cincinnati, so there were plenty of heavy objects at Dean's fingertips after his gun had been knocked out of his hand. He picked up a dusty pipe from the ground, and hit a home run across the fucker's head.

It hissed and spun back around toward Dean, lifting one of its massive claws to bring down.

Dean cowered against the blow, cornered and helpless, but the Devourer arched its back and let out a wailing cry as a large sword stabbed into its chest cavity, then it crumbled to the ground.

Sam was behind it, holding a large blade into the back of the beast.

Something tugged at Dean's heart when he saw the lavender ball of light fade and disappear.

"What _was_ that thing?" Dean asked, staring at the massive, crumpled figure on the floor.

"A Devourer," Sam said, breathless, staring down at it too.

"No, I mean... the light."

"Oh," he replied with a note of sadness in his voice. "That was Ed."

Dean looked up at Sam, wracking his brain to figure out who Ed was. He knew Sam had already told him, but everything was just so damn foggy nowadays. "Sorry, who's Ed?"

Sam looked back at Dean, brow furrowed in confusion. "The missing person we were trying to save, Dean." When Dean didn't reply, Sam continued, "Devourers take the essence of people in order to sustain them. So it's for the best, I guess. It's agonizing being feasted on by a Devourer. It shreds your soul. Even if we'd been able to save Ed's essence, I didn't read far enough to find out how to get it back in his body."

"Speaking of bodies," Dean began, looking around the large room, "where's his?"

Sam looked around too. "I guess we should go look."

Given that in the scuffle with the Devourer, Dean split his lip and cracked a rib or two, he was pretty damn steady in the knowledge that this wasn't just a blissful dream in hell.

Mostly because Alastair wasn't that smart. Dean would get suspicious if things ever became a little _too_ easy for him.

Dean limped quietly through a darkened hallway, bloodied copper pipe still in hand and Sam at his heels.

 _"Dean,"_ he heard from behind a door, followed by guttural, agonized groaning.

The voice sounded familiar.

"Cas?" he asked in a harsh whisper, pressing his ear closer to the source of the noise.

"Get _in_ _here_ already and _help me_ ," Cas growled.

Always so fucking _bitchy._

Of course, the door was locked, so Dean took a step back and stomp-kicked it in, shattering the frame and making his cracked ribs ache like a motherfucker.

In retrospect, he could have asked Sam to do it, but something about rescuing Cas just made Dean think it was _his_ job and no one else's.

And if Cas appreciated him for it and stopped being a goddamn toolbag for five seconds, all the better.

Dean had no idea why the guy kept popping in and out of their lives. He couldn't tell Cas's motivations for anything, other than to deliver his melodramatic one-liners and have unsettling, enigmatic stare-downs.

The fucker wouldn't agree with a damn word Dean said. It started to feel like Cas just liked coming by to argue and ruffle Dean's metaphorical feathers before fluttering off with his literal ones.

When they crossed the threshold, an intense copper smell hit his nose, wafting through the long room which was lined with dark blue lockers against white cement brick. "Cas?" Dean called again.

"Over here," Cas groaned again, and Dean turned, staring down the length of the room to a gruesome sight.

Cas was hanging, spikes in each of his shoulders pinning him to the wall, stomach torn open, intestines hanging down, blood dripping steadily from his body and mouth.

Dean dropped the pipe, breath caught in his throat.

Then he fell to his knees.

This wasn't real. It couldn’t be real. Dean was wrong. This was just Alastair’s style after all, convincing Dean he was in reality, giving him a case, giving him a goddamn _angel_ , a symbol of everything Dean wanted embodied by a trench-coat-wearing little _punk_ , then pinning him to a wall and showing Dean just what he was capable of.

Not what Alastair was capable of, though. What _Dean_ was capable of.

This. Torturing, lacerating, _killing_ the personification of purity.

Dean didn't know how, but this was his own doing. This was his fault.

Sam sprang into action and grabbed a chair, then dragged it to the wall Cas was hanging from and stepped up, holding Cas as he yanked the spikes from his shoulders.

Cas slumped over Sam, and he gently stepped down from the chair, setting him on the ground against a set of lockers.

"Not much time," Cas slurred, eyes rolling into the back of his head, body visibly shaking, face becoming paler with every passing second.

All Dean could do was stare, breath shallow in his chest, mind flitting between hell and reality and not being able to figure out the difference.

Blood trickled down Cas's face in a steady stream, and a pool of it formed beneath him, hands useless at his sides.

"Need... need new vessel," Cas gurgled around the blood seeping out of his mouth. _"Dean..."_

Dean swallowed, and focused on taking deep breaths. "Yeah, Cas?"

"Need you to be… vessel." Cas coughed, and fell on his side in a fit, blood splattering out of his mouth onto the cold tile.

"But Sam is..." Dean wanted to say, _"not actually in hell, so he’d probably make a better vessel."_

Before Dean could finish his sentence, Cas snapped, "No. Only you. Need... permission. Just say… _yes_." The light behind his eyes began to fade, and his eyelids fluttered shut, before croaking out, _"Please, Dean..."_

Again, the words from Bobby's kitchen flitted through his head. _"I dragged you out of hell."_

The problem was, Dean wasn’t convinced that this “reality” was anything other than hell in disguise. All signs were pointing to yes, but if this was a test, if Alastair was just tricking Dean into something, then this would be Dean's only chance to keep his angel with him.

Even if Cas wasn't real, he was a symbol of hope, and despite their incessant bickering and how much of a _total douchebag_ Castiel seemed to be every second he was in Dean's presence, Dean still managed to whisper, "Yes."

A white ether trailed out of Cas's open mouth, lax and dripping blood on the floor, eyes staring into oblivion.

The haze swirled around Dean's head, warm and electric, a small ethereal buzz emitting from it.

Dean watched it, eyes flicking back and forth, head turning with the bright swirling mist.

Then it just... disappeared.

Dean looked at Sam, who blinked a couple times and asked, "What happened?"

"I... I don't know. I don't feel anything," Dean said with a shrug. He felt a pang in his chest at the idea that maybe it hadn't worked, and Castiel was really dead.

Like Ed, it was for the best. Cas wasn't real anyway. None of this was.

_Of course this is real, you ass._

"What the..." Dean looked around the room, trying to find the location of the voice, then looked up at Sam. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear wh—"

An agonizing pain erupted in Dean's head, and a blinding white light seared behind his eyes. A force beyond his own control pulled his body to standing. His heart beat rapidly against his chest as the white light faded to blackness, and all he could feel was Alastair's hot breath on his neck, all he could hear was Alastair's voice, gleeful as he asked, “Are you ready to join us yet, Dean?”

Dean cowered in his own mind, the tiny corner of safety he built when things got rough. He held onto a memory. A single light in the darkness of eternal hell, and that’s what kept him going. He held it in his hand like a possession, and he wouldn’t let anyone touch it.

The sudden, cool fluttering of wings in the heat of the pit kept Dean from delving into the memory, and then those wings were folding themselves around his body, lifting him up, searing his shoulder with pure divinity as he rose higher and higher, finally meeting the warm, bright light of day…

_DEAN WINCHESTER IS SAVED._

He didn’t hear those words in his mind. It was just a thought, swimming around joyously, a happy thrum of energy echoing in his head.

And then Dean was standing in front of himself as he walked toward him, shotgun bullets firing into his chest.

He felt the pain of them. It was excruciating. But unlike normal pain, Dean found he just… didn’t care about it, because he knew it wouldn’t kill him, or even damage him. So it became miniscule, unimportant, irrelevant to the big picture.

When he finally approached himself, Dean stabbed him in the chest with a knife.

That also hurt, but again, he didn’t care. He pulled the knife out from his chest and dropped it to the ground.

He felt very pleased to see Dean with his new, human eyes, but very sad that Dean didn’t recognize him, believe him, or think he was worth saving from hell at all. Again, like the knife and the bullets, the emotional pain was minute. It existed because the body existed, and emotions were part of the body, but otherwise, emotional pain was unnecessary to pay any more attention to than a fleeting acknowledgment.

After all, there was much work to be done.             

***

Dean awoke the next morning like he did every day: bracing himself for agonizing pain and dreading the day ahead of him

This morning did not disappoint in terms of agonizing pain.

He readied himself for the wave of dread, but none came.

The pain dissipated.

Then he made the mistake of opening his eyes. Rather, his eyes were already physically open, so he just came to consciousness behind them.

 _Fuck_. He was _standing_. And _talking_ to someone.

Everything looked so… _different_. Light and color was brighter. He could feel the energy in his surroundings, like everything around him, every molecule, was connected to him by a string, and with a flick of his wrist, he could command all of it to do his bidding.

Dean could recognize with his physical eyes that the man he was talking to was black, middle-aged, balding, wore plastic-rimmed glasses, and had a green vest with the bookstore’s name emblazoned over the breast pocket, which held inside it, of all things, a pocket protector and an assortment of pens.

With his new eyes, though, he could actually _see_ the being in front of him. Dean didn’t know how he knew, but he could see the man’s soul. It was more than just seeing, though. It was _feeling_. There was a cloud floating around him, an aura that emitted small sparks of light and changing colors. He couldn’t specifically read the man’s mind, but he felt waves of frustration and anxiety, an undercurrent of depression and despair. He felt every minute of pain this man had ever felt, every ounce of sorrow and suffering woven into the aura around him. There were still blips of joy, though, tiny dots of color and light dancing around the dark shadow that encompassed him.

Dean felt bad for the man, and wanted to ask what he’d lost that was so dear to him in order to make him feel this way.

“We need to locate a creature called a _Devourer_. Where might your tomes on mythical beings be located?” Dean heard himself ask.

The man stared at Dean, open-mouthed and confused. “We have a _Dungeons & Dragons _section. They’re with the comic books on the second floor.”

“I fail to see how this is funny—“ Dean took back the reigns of his vocal chords and interrupted himself, “I’ll go check that out, thanks.”

 _How did you do that?_ the voice in his head spoke. It wasn’t deep and rough like Cas’s vessel’s, rather, it was soft yet stern, a pulse in his mind more than vibrating airwaves that hit his eardrums.

Dean had no idea how to respond other than out loud, and he didn’t want to be seen talking to himself in public as he climbed the stairs that the chronically depressed store clerk had indicated.

_I can hear your thoughts, Dean. You don’t have to speak out loud. Just think._

**_Oh. I don’t know. Am I not supposed to be able to do that?_ **

_Generally when I take a vessel, I have control of that vessel for the duration I am using it._

**_So you’re saying I have, like, vessel superpowers?_ **

_Your will is strong, yes. Though I request that while I reside within you, you allow me access to utilize your body as necessary in order to locate the Devourer._

**_Fuck that, dude. No way. This is my property and you’re just a renter here. I get veto power._ **

_If you insist, though this endeavor would be simpler if you would just—_

**_I said no._ **

_Fine._

Dean looked around the store and out the big window of the second floor, which overlooked an ocean.

Last he checked, the only body of water close to Cincinnati was the Ohio River, and this definitely wasn’t a river.

**_Where the fuck are we? And where’s Sam?_ **

_Southern California. And I have no idea where your brother is. Unless he prays to me, I have no means of locating him._

**_How the hell did we get to SoCal? And why are we here?_ **

_I transported us here. While your soul took its… excessive amount of time becoming accustomed to my presence, Sam found a news story indicating that another body had been found, pinned to the wall with sharpened bones whose abdomen was slashed._

Of course, Cas didn’t think all of that information. He shared it, like uploading a memory into Dean’s brain. Dean had the entire article stored there, pictures and all, without ever having read it.

**_Excuse me for not being used to celestial beings invading my body._ **

Something flashed across Dean’s mind, the equivalent of a single frame that didn’t belong inserted into a film reel, like a thought Cas didn’t want shared had been immediately retracted.

**_What was that?_ **

_Nothing. Please allow me to take over momentarily and research the Devourer who has my vessel’s essence._

**_Why is “your vessel’s essence” so important?_ **

_It’s the means by which my grace adheres itself. Without Jimmy Novak’s essence, I have nothing to adhere to, so I cannot heal my vessel’s body._

Cas shared the image of someone nailing jell-o to a tree.

Dean laughed.

_Why is that funny?_

Dean realized he didn’t have to explain it in words—which he couldn’t do even if he tried— so, like Cas had done with the news article, he simply _moved over_ the feeling of absurdity in the context of jell-o and trees.

Dean laughed again, but it wasn’t him controlling the laugh.

**_I didn’t know you knew how to laugh._ **

_I was unaware that I could either. Thus far, no one has been able to relay the concept of humor to me._

Dean felt a wave of apprehension hit him, and then a wave of an emotion he couldn’t place which felt a little bit like affection. However, similar to the inserted frame in the movie reel, this feeling was redacted quickly.

**_Why do you keep doing that?_ **

_Doing what?_

**_Hiding things._ **

A wave of shock hit Dean, followed by embarrassment, and then his face flushed completely of its own accord.

_I’m… not._

**_Dude, you can’t lie to me. We’re sharing the same brain._ **

Dean felt relief that was not his own when another store clerk approached him. “Can I help you find anything?”

He realized he’d been staring out the window for a long time now.

When he turned, the woman staring back at him was a pale, curvy redhead who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had startling gray eyes and a wide, friendly smile.

Dean had to force himself not to trail his eyes down to her chest, which, from his peripheral vision, he could tell displayed ample cleavage.

Her aura was bright, mostly yellow that faded into orange and red, like fire. Dean got the distinct impression that this woman, for all her seeming innocence and shy smile and tiny voice, had a dark, wild streak and knew how to party.

This woman seemed right up Dean’s alley, and after decades in hell, he could really use some physical intimacy. If he could read people better, then maybe this whole vessel gig wasn’t so bad after all.

**_I got this one._ **

“Yeah, actually. Do you have a section of the store devoted to… older books? As in, ancient ones. Tomes, maybe. Occult-themed tomes.” Dean knew it was a weird request, but it was one he was accustomed to asking over the years, and found it yielded few successful results, more often eliciting odd stares and requests to leave the establishment.

The wild-aura’d woman, however, just smiled politely and replied, “Of course. I’ll take you to the basement.”

As she turned to lead Dean away, he stared at her ass, round and perfect in her skinny-leg jeans.

With an intense wave of a strange emotion that was not his own, Dean’s head forced itself to the ceiling, and he ran into a bookshelf.

 _“Fuck_! _”_

The clerk turned around. “Is everything all right?”

Dean forced his chin back down and smiled. “Yep, just fine.”

She giggled to mask her confusion and led him down the staircase.

**_What the fuck was that?_ **

_Please refrain from sexually objectifying anyone while I endure residing within you. You’re a human being, not an animal._

Dean smirked at Cas’s flustered irritation, and sent him an image of what he speculated it would look and feel like to explore the woman’s wild side.

Lying back on the mattress, an expanse of curvy, pale skin writhing above him, holding him down and smiling, sweet little voice whispering _filthy fucking things_ in his ear.

_DEAN._

Dean chuckled inwardly.

**_What?_ **

_DON’T DO THAT._

**_Why? Guys share porn all the time._ **

_I’m not a ‘guy.’ I am an immortal celestial being, thus genderless._

**_So this shouldn’t bother you then._ **

Dean imagined what the woman’s plush lips would feel like over his own, trailing down his neck while he slowly unbuttoned her pants and reached inside them, grazing her hot wetness with his fingers until she moaned, deep and heady, into his ear.

_STOP IT._

**_Fine. I don’t get why, though, if you don’t give a crap about sex. I can feel you hiding something, you know. It’s like you’ve walled-off a space in my head._ **

_That’s exactly what I’ve done, and I would appreciate it if you would allow me my privacy._

**_You’re the one in_ my _body, and you’re asking_ me _to give_ you _privacy?_**

_Yes._

**_Why?_ **

Before Cas could answer, they were in the basement, which was cold and damp with rickety shelves of old books lining the vast room.

“Here you are,” the woman said, gesturing around the room and smiling. “Please let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thank you…” Dean let his gaze sweep to her chest under the guise of looking at her name tag. “Cheryl.”

“Any time…” she trailed off, inviting Dean to supply his own name, gaze darkening under her long lashes while a small, seductive smile crossed her lips.

“Dean,” he replied, smiling just as seductively back at her.

“Well, Dean, I’ll be shelving books upstairs if you,” her eyes flicked down to his lips and back up again, “ _want_ me.”

_I would rather take my chances in Jimmy Novak’s dead, essence-less body than endure this._

**_Can it, Cas._ **

“Absolutely,” Dean said with a crooked grin and a stare to match her level of intensity.

She giggled again and left the room, one last glance behind her before she climbed the staircase, high-heeled leather boots clacking on the metallic steps on her way out.

_Please relinquish control while I conduct my research._

Dean felt a nudge at the corner of his awareness, and, for lack of a better way to do it, imagined letting go of the steering wheel of the Impala to let Cas drive.

It was a surprisingly effective method.

His body was no longer moving of his own accord, though he could feel his movements, feel the breath in his chest inhale and exhale the scent of old books and cold dampness.

It felt just like relaxing in the passenger seat while Sammy drove for a few hours.

Dean didn’t let Sam drive Baby until he was eighteen of course, after teaching him how to hijack cars to practice driving them instead of the Impala.

After months of pleading, Dean’s eighteenth birthday gift to Sam that year had been making him a key to the Impala and the right to drive it when Dean needed a couple hours of shut-eye on long trips across the country.

Dean’s problem with Cas, though, was that he _didn’t_ trust him. He only learned that angels even existed less than a month ago, and now one was inhabiting his body, moving his arms and legs and eyes on his behalf.

As Dean fell into his spiral of dark thoughts, tendrils of trauma touched at his mind, like they always did when he closed his eyes and stopped focusing on the world around him.

Hell was still so vivid to him that he swore over half the time, he was still there, and the other half of the time he’d been delusional to think he could ever be taken out of it. It was just a matter of time before he would open his eyes and see Alastair’s manic face, slicing into him, branding him, shredding his soul and systematically destroying the pieces.

Dean’s heart beat rapidly against his chest. A drop of sweat trailed down the side of his face, but his eyes continued scanning the crisp brown page of a book he had just pulled from a shelf, comprehending a language he’d never seen before, let alone would know how to read.

When the paper began shaking in his hands, he felt Cas’s attention turn to him inwardly.

Without thoughts, he _felt_ Cas walk around the darkness that had taken hold of Dean, exploring it, trying to understand it with open curiosity.

A warm wave of compassion washed over him, and fierce lightness cut away at all the dark tendrils, like a machete clearing a path in front of him.

The path made way to a box of sorts, a patch of his mind that Cas appeared to have chiseled away for him.

It was a room with a big bed adorned in soft, white linens next to a bay window with a view of the mountains. There was a fire crackling softly in a fireplace. The room was warm and lit only by the fading light of the sun setting slowly behind the mountains.

**_What is this?_ **

_A place I constructed for you based on your preferences. You can fall asleep here if you’d like. You’ll be safe. I’ve locked your memories away for the time being, so they won’t invade your dreams. Please trust me, Dean. I assure you, I’ll take care of your body._

**_For the time being?_ **

_What you endured… no one is meant to return from that. The human brain is not built to comprehend other planes of existence._

Remorse that was not his own tinged at his heart.

_I deeply regret not foreseeing this when I dragged you out of hell. It was not my intention for you to continue suffering in life as you had in death. I cannot take your memories away from you, but I can hide you from them. They’ll continue finding you, however, until you…_

Cas’s thoughts trailed off. They didn’t redact like before, they just ended.

**_Until?_ **

He felt his body sigh.

_Until you find a way to heal._

 Such a concept seemed absurd to him. Healing wasn’t even an option. This is just who he was now. There was no going back to the old days of his freewheeling flippancy, hunting monsters by day and hustling pool by night.

He was his pain, and his pain was him.

A soft warmth took over him, like a gentle caress, and he felt his exhaustion hit as he was laid down in bed in the mountain cabin of his mind’s eye.

_Rest now, Dean._

He nodded inwardly, somehow feeling the soft cotton of the pillowcase underneath his head despite physically standing in a basement of a shady bookstore in Riverside.

Thinking about the warm caress that still enveloped him, he let his mind slip away, and enjoyed the first moments of peace he felt since being dragged from hell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so fun to write! I hope you enjoy mindfuck smut!

Dean came to consciousness again hours later and found that his eyes were still open, quickly scanning a page in front of him that was in a language he still didn’t recognize.

Out of habit, he lifted his hand to rub his eyes, then stretched and yawned, cracking his neck in the process.

_Stop it, Dean. I’m trying to read._

**_C’mon man, let’s take a break. How long has it been since I last ate?_ **

_Your body does not need to obtain sustenance while I use you as a vessel._

**_Yeah, but I could really go for a cheeseburger right about now._ **

_Cheeseburgers have little to do with our task at hand._

**_Why are you in such a rush?_ **

_Because Jimmy’s body is decaying rapidly and I will be unable to heal him after a certain point._

**_Oh._  
**

Dean’s eyes flicked back to the page with an indignant little huff.

It was so fucking _boring_ being in his own mind without being able to control his body. He was thankful that the dark thoughts didn’t immediately return like he was expecting them to—a feat by Cas, he guessed—but he had nothing to do now but think of… normal stuff.

So he did what he always used to do when he was bored:

**_“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..._ **

**_It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.”_ **

_Dean, what are you doing?_

**_Retelling myself the plot of Star Wars._ **

In response, Dean physically sighed against his own will.

_That is incredibly distracting._

**_Fine._ **

He couldn’t just… _stop_ himself from thinking. What did passengers in cars do? Sleep, talk, read. Dean couldn’t do any of that though, because he’d just woken up, there was no one to talk to, and he was already technically reading.

He supposed he could pay attention to what Cas was reading, but there was really no point in focusing his attention on stuff that was being filtered into his brain without him needing to concentrate on it.

Plus, it was probably more boring than not thinking anything at all.

**_“During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”_ **

_DEAN._

**_Ugh, I can’t just turn off my brain, man! What else am I supposed to do?_ **

_That’s not my problem, Dean._

**_The fuck it’s not your problem. We’re sharing the same headspace. My problems are your problems._ **

Dean found himself steeling his jaw and reading the text with a bit more sharpness than was strictly necessary, and a wave of irritation washed over him.

He laughed, and realized he was having _fun_ irritating his angel.

_What about this situation is humorous to you?_

Instead of answering, Dean nudged at Cas’s grace in his head, exploring it with curiosity, bouncing around it, taking the ethereal fluid apart with mental fingers and examining it, like a fabric where each thread was made of heaven.

_Please stop. My grace is not a toy._

Dean ignored him, and looked closer at it. He focused on one little thread and expanded it, and saw what looked like the Grand Canyon. He looked at another and saw a cluster of stars, like a nebula. He examined one more and saw…

_DEAN. STOP._

…himself.

It wasn’t a picture. It was more like a short movie on a loop. It was Dean’s entire life wrapped up in a grain of sand, from the moment he was born to the moment he gave his permission for Cas to instill his grace inside of him.

He gasped, and mentally retracted from the grace while physically pushing his chair back from the small dusty desk he was sitting at.

**_What was that? Why do you have the Grand Canyon and space and me in your grace?_ **

Dean didn’t get a response.

He looked around inwardly, and the ethereal mist in his mind was just… gone.

“Cas?” he asked aloud, in case he had escaped somehow.

No answer.

He looked down at the book Cas had been reading, and he couldn’t recognize the language. He hadn’t been able to before, but he could _comprehend_ it. He could understand the meanings behind the squiggles even if he couldn’t directly translate them.

Briefly panicking, he closed his eyes and prodded around in his mind, trying to find the cabin in the mountains again, to no avail. It was gone too.

Finally, he forced himself to push at the boundaries Cas had set up, remembering what he saw in Cas’s grace, his whole life in a tiny, timeless strand.

Piercing pain shot through his head, like every migraine he’d ever had rolled into one, like a giant metal door that stopped him from remembering what Cas’s grace looked or felt like.

His last-ditch effort involved _forcing_ himself to think about hell and Alastair to see if the wall Cas had put up had been taken down too.

To see if Cas had really left.

And there it all was, every second of it come to life in his mind’s eye: Alastair’s sick smile, the people he tortured, how he reveled in it and took joy in the pain of others; the darkness, the black coldness of hell that seeped into his soul and saturated it with its unyielding agony.

Dean gripped his chest, unable to breathe as the dam Cas had put up broke down and flooded him with the immense burden of his past.

He started trembling, breath hitching continuously as he tried to bring himself to the present, bring his mind back to reality, but fuck… what even _was_ reality? This wasn’t reality. It couldn’t be. There was no angel to save him from hell. There were no angels at all, and certainly not ones with warm, peaceful, comforting grace that helped him shield his mind and heal his soul, certainly not ones with fierce eyes and a commanding voice in whatever vessel they took, and certainly not ones who would be willing to raise Dean’s worthless soul from the pits of hell.

There were no angels. Angels weren’t real.

There was no basement, no bookstore, no Riverside. His present environment wasn’t real.

There was only hell, and Alastair, and his hands, the great creators of pain and suffering, covered in more blood than could ever be cleansed.

He looked at them, shaking, and saw the blood dripping down them, flowing down his arms and onto his legs in thick rivulets. He didn't know where the blood was coming from, but he could feel it trickling down his face too, down his temples and his cheeks and his chin, trailing down his neck and shirt. He looked down to find a pool of blood at his feet, growing impossibly fast, flooding his shoes. There was blood everywhere, and he knew, deep in his soul, that the blood in which he was covered was not his own: every drop of it was the blood he had _shed_ , the life force he'd taken from so many others just to protect himself, because he was _weak_ , he was _cruel_ , and he was _evil._

He was a _monster_.

A bubble rose in his throat, and he choked out a whimper as tears threatened behind his eyes. "Cas?" He swallowed, looked up at the ceiling, and asked in a small voice, "Where are you, man?"

When he didn't get an answer, inside his head or out, he squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his hands.

"Dean?"

He started, and looked up at the voice.

Cheryl was staring down at him, eyebrows knit in concern and a hand held out to maybe touch his back, but hesitating because why the _fuck_ would anyone want to console a dude sitting in the basement of a bookstore in SoCal talking to himself and covered in the blood of an unfathomable number of innocents?

He looked at his hands again before hiding them from her, the tools of destruction. She was a good person. She didn't need to see that kind of thing.

The blood was gone.

It was just... skin. Knuckles. Fingernails. The tiny scar on his wrist from when his dad accidentally swiped him with a lit cigarette. The bigger scar on his palm from the first time his dad went paranoid, convinced that Dean was a shifter, threw him against a wall, and cut him open with silver. The only thing on hand was a butter knife, and being slowly cut open with a dull blade was no fucking picnic.

He was only five when it happened. It had been the first time, but it sure as hell hadn't been the last.

He brought his hand up to feel the blood on his face, and it was dry.

None of it was real. He was okay.

"Am I..." he started, not sure how to finish the question, then looked up at her. He must've looked like a trainwreck. "What time is it?"

"We're about to close up. I came down to turn off the lights and saw you were still here. Are you sure you're okay?" she said, taking a step closer to him, and placed a tentative hand on his shoulder.

It was warm, and it secured him down to earth. He welcomed the touch, because it, beyond everything else, felt _real_. For the first time since he'd gotten back, the generous affection of a complete stranger was the only thing that had been able to steady him.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Everything was okay. Cas had just been a delusion. Maybe. How else did he come back from hell if angels, if _Cas_ , weren't real?

Maybe hell was what wasn't real.

But he wasn't going to get on that train just yet.

How the fuck did he end up in SoCal?

"Yeah," Dean nodded, "yeah, I'm fine." Then he plastered on his nicest smile, and stood, taking the hand from his shoulder and holding it in his own. "You're closing up, you said?"

He looked her in the eye for the first time, and she stared up at him, smiling and open and a bit challenging, a wild ferocity behind her eyes that made Dean's heart flip a little in his chest.

Dean always did have a problem with constantly falling in love.

It hit him, though, that he could still see her aura, the yellow and orange that was fading into a darker, more sensual red.

Cas was real after all, and he was just hiding.

That _fucker_.

"You got any plans after this?" Dean asked, tilting his head and returning her challenging stare.

Fuck the Devourer. Fuck Jimmy Novak. Fuck his cowardly angel.

Cheryl grinned at him and said, "I'll meet you in the parking lot in twenty."

***

An hour later, Dean's life felt almost _normal_ again. He was walking on the beach with Cheryl— which normally really wasn't his gig, something about the infinite expanse of ocean was just two steps away from the kind of panic that flying gave him— and it was nighttime. Cheryl told him about her life, which was simple in its complexity, and it soothed Dean more than he could ever tell her, to just know that someone like her existed: happy and carefree, but not naive or dumb. She had a sharp mind and was witty as _fuck_ , and maybe in another world, Dean would be able to devote more than one night of his life to her, maybe a lot of nights to her, and a lot of days too.

"...so he reached over the counter, and— I'm not even kidding— starting _choking_ the guy! The manager had to pull him away," she concluded with a shake of her head.

Dean laughed, and it wasn't fake. He was just really happy in her warming presence.

"He was never allowed back in that Wendy's again."

They fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence, and Dean slipped his hand into hers, threading their fingers together.

Before, Dean would have hit it and quit it without another thought, but after coming back from hell, he appreciated these small moments so much more than he ever did: the feel of another person's skin, getting to know someone new without the fear that he'd have to kill them soon or that their life was in imminent danger somehow, being around someone who didn't have the weight of the entire world on their shoulders and who could laugh with their entire soul, which Dean could tell because he could literally  _see_ her soul, and it was as beautiful as she was.

Her hand was small and soft and perfect, steadying and consoling like it had been when it was on his shoulder not too long ago, and everything just felt so _nice_.

_Dean, this has nothing to do with the Devourer._

Dean gasped.

"Are you okay?" Cheryl asked, giving his hand a small squeeze, but not letting go.

**_Where the fuck have you been, man? You know what, never mind, don't answer that. I don't fucking care. Just go back to wherever you came from. I'm busy._ **

"Yeah, just, uh... remembered that I needed to call my brother later," he muttered.

_This isn't important._

**_The fuck it's not important._ **

Dean shoved all his emotions onto Castiel's grace, which now flooded his mind like it did before, swirling around his perception like a live wire in his brain.

He felt a terse silence in his mind as Cas took all the information in. He could actually _feel_ Cas learning human emotion as Dean sent him pieces of all the moments that led up to him holding Cheryl's hand, a little bit of nervousness and apprehension combined with attraction and excitement and fun, with an undercurrent of a relief he could never describe in words, that for the time being, he trusted the fact that he was standing on solid ground.

_All right. But as soon as you're done with... whatever this is—_

**_It's a date, Cas._ **

_Whenever you're done with this "date," I've pinpointed the location of the Devourer with Jimmy's essence and we'll need to move quickly._

**_So you're saying I can't spend the night with her?_ **

_While I'm using you as a vessel, your body has no need—_

**_To sleep, yeah, I know. It's just nice to fall asleep next to someone every once in a while._ **

Open curiosity tinged at Dean's mind as Cas reflected on that notion. His fierce anticipation to find the Devourer slowly abated.

_I'm sorry, Dean. I can bring you back here when I get my proper vessel back, but right now, if I'm unable to get Jimmy's essence back in time, I will have no corporeal form with which to navigate the material plane and will be of no assistance in preventing the impending apocalypse._

Dean felt new information pressing at his mind, like Cas was uploading data to his brain.

**_Wait, so you're saying this Devourer is a seal too?_ **

_Devourers, plural. And yes. They were brought up from hell to rip angels from their vessels en masse. It's a chain effect: the more angels looking for vessels, the fewer angels preventing the breaking of other seals._

**_Fuck. This really is urgent then._ **

"So," Cheryl began, stopping and pulling Dean to face her. She gave him a sly, mischievous smile, then reached up with the hand not holding his own to the back of his neck, and, while reaching up on her toes, she pulled him down and met their lips together.

Everything about Devourers and seals and the apocalypse was instantly obliterated from Dean's mind, and the only thing that remained was the feel of her soft, warm, plush lips on his, which opened to a sweet tongue that explored his mouth, and _fuck_ Dean hadn't had this in so long, he almost forgot what it felt like.

A harsh line of irritation and a twinge of something else Dean couldn't place ran through his head.

_Dean. Please._

That didn't feel like a _"please let's get on with the case,"_ it felt like a, _"please don't do this."_

**_Why?_ **

Cheryl let go of Dean's hand and ran a finger up the length of his dick over his jeans. It was a teasing touch, but it lit a fire in him and he deepened the kiss, running his hand through her long hair and breaking away momentarily to trail heated kisses down her neck.

Cas didn't respond to the question. Instead, Dean felt an inward gasp, a touch of curiosity and intrigue and more of that feeling he couldn't quite place that wasn't his own.

"Why don't we go back to my place?" Cheryl whispered in his ear as Dean sucked and bit lightly at the divine skin of her neck.

_Yes. I... agree with that idea._

Dean pulled away and smirked down at her, both at Cas's newfound eagerness and his personal excitement at the thought.

Then he remembered that Cheryl wasn't just another conquest, that he didn't do that shit anymore. He didn't want to be the bad guy in anyone's life any more than he had to be because he'd spent the past ten goddamn years torturing souls. There was no reason to torture them in life, too.

"Look, Cheryl," he began, and looked at his feet while scratching the back of his neck, "I really like you, like _really_ like you, but..."

 _What are you doing, Dean. What are you_ doing _._

**_The right thing, Cas. Keep your dick in your pants._ **

_I don't have a—_

**_It's a turn of phrase. Shut the fuck up for a sec._ **

Cheryl smiled knowingly and replied, "You're not from around here and you're gonna skip out of town soon and never call me again?"

Dean pursed his lips and continued avoiding her gaze. "Yeah, kinda."

She faux-pouted at him and crossed a hand over her heart with a melodramatic gasp. "Ow, my _feelings_! I'll never love again! You've broken me, Dean."

Dean furrowed his brow.

She laughed, and continued, "Dean, I'm a grown-ass woman, and you're a grown-ass man. We have a connection, and that's cool, but it doesn't mean we have to get married. You can come back to my place, we'll have a little fun, then you can do whatever you want, no muss, no fuss. Unlike whatever stereotype of me you're holding onto in that pretty little head of yours, I will not pine after you upon your departure, and I will not be waiting by my phone for you to text me. If you're in town again, we'll hook up again. If you're not, no big deal." She shrugged, noncommittal, and continued staring at Dean like he was prey.

Dean could have proposed right then and there.

_Permission granted. Go go go._

**_Jesus, Cas, when did you turn into a horndog?_ **

_I'm not a—_

**_Goddamn, it's a turn of phrase. Now just leave me alone. It's hard enough navigating these situations with my head instead of my dick, and right now it's talking for the both of us, so just stay quiet._ **

It felt like Cas's grace was swirling in his head much faster than it had been, open and fascinated and just as distracted from the mission as Dean was.

Dean reminded himself that they were sharing a brain, so Dean's distractibility was Cas's distractibility, Dean's attraction was Cas's attraction, and Dean's decisions were Cas's decisions until he gave Cas control of his body again.

**_Down, tiger._ **

_I'm not a—_

**_JUST SHUT UP._ **

Dean nodded, thankful that Cas wasn't vying for control of his body, and replied, "Okay then, let's head to your place."

***

Dean couldn't tell if Cheryl was the worst host ever or the best, because the moment they stepped foot into her apartment, she had him against the door and they were kissing like they had been on the beach, all hot and frantic and brand fucking new, which was something Dean hated that he loved so much, getting to know someone by touch rather than with words. It just made so much more sense to him.

Words were totally overrated when a curvy ginger was sucking hickeys on his neck.

The weird part, though, was that he could _feel_ Cas in his brain observing everything, taking it all in with an eagerness he didn't think the angel was capable of. He got the sense that Cas had been so curious about this part of the human experience but had been hesitant to try it. It was like he knew sex existed on an academic level, but never thought to explore it hands-on.

Dean couldn't lie to himself. It was really fucking hot that Cas was watching, and more so that Cas was _into_ it.

Cheryl was all hands and feverish domination, and she had Dean groaning within minutes, still pressed against the door, the lights still off in her apartment. There was no, _"Can I get you anything to drink?"_ or, _"Let me slip into something more... comfortable."_

It was all _now now now,_ and god _damn_ Dean appreciated that about her, along with every-fucking-thing else.

Different time, different place, and Dean was sure he'd be making eggs and bacon for her in the morning and going all doe-eyed when she stepped out of her bedroom wearing his t-shirt, because even though Dean had always been a hit-it-and-quit-it kinda guy, deep down he was all about treating people right. His past was really all bad circumstance and machismo. Even if she wouldn't be waiting around for him to text her, he sure as shit would have been, and if she did, fuck-all if he'd ever do anything but grovel at her feet until she kicked him to the curb.

She pushed herself away from him and backed up, one corner of her luscious red lips twitched up, and turned around while lifting her shirt over her head and tossing it to the ground, escaping into her bedroom.

Dean was expecting some quip from Cas, a, _"What are you waiting for?"_ or, _"Please continue this endeavor,"_ but Cas remained silent, grace flitting excitedly though his head, providing brief but strong currents of emotions here and there, but no concrete thoughts.

He stepped out of his shoes and socks and dropped his jacket over the back of a chair, then pulled his shirt off as he followed her into the room.

She took off her jeans and crawled onto the bed, then turned over to lean back and invite Dean in with nothing but that slightly challenging glare she always had.

Dean crawled between her legs and kissed up the soft flesh of her stomach, between her breasts, and up her neck, landing on her lips to kiss her again, and it was sweet yet harsh, Dean's lower lip between her teeth as she sucked it and wrapped her legs around his waist.

He trailed his hands down her body, following her drastic curves and feeling how unbelievably _soft_ her skin was, so pale and delicate in the dimmed light of her bedroom that it almost glowed, or maybe that was her aura shining which Dean forgot he could still see with some kind of weird, third eye he now had.

It was like riding a bike. Dean hadn't technically gotten laid in forty years, but this, _this_ was something he could never forget how to do. He was eager to prove that his hands could bring pleasure instead of pain, so he set about pleasing this woman who seemed more than happy to take what he had to offer.

Dean reached behind her back and unhooked her bra with deft fingers, then pulled away to tear it off of her, revealing large breasts so perfect that he let out a whimper.

She giggled and smiled, then gasped when Dean immediately wrapped his lips around a nipple, licking and sucking it and biting gently.

Cheryl didn't seem one for loud pornagraphic moaning, but her breathy keening described her pleasure so authentically that Dean's dick was achingly hard within moments, still trapped in his jeans, feeling unpleasantly tighter and tighter by the second.

He dropped his hand between her legs and ran it up and down her panties lightly.

She spread her legs wider, and Dean dipped his finger underneath the fabric to feel her wetness on his fingers, bringing it up to her clit and circling it around the hard nub.

Gasping again, Cheryl writhed underneath him, steady hands threaded in his hair, head thrown back with her eyes closed as Dean continued taking her apart.

_May I assist?_

Dean tensed for a moment, unsure what Cas could possibly do as an ether in his brain, but Dean's curiosity was peaked, and thus far Cas hadn't done anything that made Dean uncomfortable.

**_Sure. What are you gonna do?_ **

Dean felt a pleasant trill at his spine, a smug triumph, and Dean's breath was completely taken away from him when everything suddenly doubled.

He could, somehow, feel himself not only circling Cheryl's clit, he could _feel what Cheryl was feeling._

He didn't even _have_ a clit, but suddenly he knew what one felt like, and _fucking Jesus Christ almighty_ did it feel amazing. Dean pressed a little harder and they gasped in unison.

**_Can I read her fucking mind or something?_ **

_More or less._

**_Is it more or is it less and, more importantly, is this going to kill me?_ **

_Unlikely._

**_I'm not so sure about that dude. Jesus fucking Christ._ **

Dean felt the smugness that wasn't his own again, and dipped a finger inside of her, and he could feel it somehow too, so he knew that she wanted a second. He filled her with a second digit and began pumping into her slowly with his hands, because that was what she wanted, until she wanted it faster, so Dean did that too.

Everything she felt, Dean felt.

And all of it felt mind-blowingly _fantastic._

Dean kissed down her body and over her hipbones, settling between her legs as she arched off the bed so he could slip her panties off, and she was so fucking beautiful that Dean could barely even breathe.

She opened her eyes and— _whoa_ — Dean could see himself through them and it was so damn confusing but also fucking hot because he could feel what Cheryl felt looking at him, and it was the exact same way he felt looking at her. There was this extra buzzing in his brain, this heady satisfaction coming from Cas at being able to see Dean outside of himself. It was blatant, open attraction and appreciation toward Dean's physical body, and Dean couldn't even wrap his head around it before it was gone, redacted with an inward gasp, like Cas hadn't meant for Dean to feel that.

It was only a matter of seconds before Dean couldn't help himself any longer and leaned back down to start lapping at Cheryl's clit.

Cheryl bucked up instinctively, which made Dean grind onto the mattress. He knew she liked it light at first, then fast and hard, two fingers inside her and pressing up into her g-spot until her gasps turned into low groans. _"Fuck_ , Dean, how are you doing this?"

Dean could feel his own orgasm stirring in him as hers ramped up, because every time she felt a jolt of pleasure, Dean did too, and it was the exact same as masturbating, trying this and that, dropping what didn't work and going with what did, over and over again.

He was acutely aware that if Cheryl came, he would too, and even though he could read her mind, he was still trapped in a male body, and there was no way he'd be able to get it up again after experiencing a _female_ orgasm.

_Simple solution, Dean. Let me take over. You can continue feeling what she feels, but I can prevent your vessel from ejaculating._

**_You're terrible at dirty talk, Cas._ **

_I'm not actually talking. Your perception of my thoughts is filtered through how you believe I speak, but in actuality, I'm only sending you abstract, wordless concepts._

**_You won't know what you're doing._ **

Dean felt an inward scoff.

_Would you like to place a wager on that?_

**_Sure. If you can give her multiples, then we'll head out as soon as my wobbly legs'll be able to take us. If you can't, I get to spend the night and make breakfast for her in the morning._ **

_Deal. Now hand over your vessel._

Dean did the mental trick of imagining letting go of a steering wheel, and Cas was sliding into his hands which shifted their pace and pressure on and in Cheryl, and within seconds she was moaning, loud and broken, hands clutched in the pillow behind her, face contorted in ecstasy.

From the passenger seat, Dean could witness all of it, everything she was feeling, everything Dean's body was feeling, but he wasn't controlling any of it. It was like having porn directly injected into his brain.

The weirdest part was the feeling of having fingers _inside_ him. It was something he never admitted to himself now, but he'd always been curious to know what it felt like to be fucked, filled completely and begging for more, underneath someone strong and firm, pounding into him, using his body for their pleasure—

Cheryl came with a stopped breath, grinding her hips onto Dean's face and arching her back off the bed. Dean felt it at the same time and _fuck_ was this what the female orgasm felt like? Because goddamn, half the human race was missing the fuck _out_. It lasted for eternity; Dean's mind felt like it had been wiped off the fucking planet, and thank god Cas had control of his body because he'd be screaming bloody murder if he had his mouth available to him.

Instead, he felt his hands pulse into her with the waves of her orgasm, and before she was completely done, he hooked his fingers up again and pounded into her mercilessly, sweeping his tongue steadily over her clit, and she was coming again, cresting over one orgasm while the next was still building up, then that one hit too, and another, and another, each one higher than the last, until Cheryl— who had until this point been one of the quietest partners Dean ever had— was shouting Dean's name in pleasure, drenching his hand in cum that poured out of her until at last she climbed back down with a small stutter of her hips.

Dean was dead.

There was no way _anyone_ could live through that.

**_Is that seriously what women feel when they come? I need a goddamn sex change._ **

_Or you can just teach yourself orgasm deprivation._

**_That's a thing??_ **

_I have been in human form for less than a month, Dean, and even I know that's a "thing."_

Cheryl stared up at the ceiling, unblinking, breathless. "Wow."

Dean sat up on his knees and asked, "Would you like to fornicate now?"

**_WHAT?_ **

_What?_

**_DUDE. Don't you know how to act? I wouldn't say that shit!_ **

Thankfully, Cheryl was too blissed-out to notice, and instead, lazy smile over her pristine features, she nodded and let out a pleased, "Mhm."

Dean sighed in relief.

**_Just... don't say anything else. There's a condom in my wallet by the way._ **

_I'm in your head, Dean. I know._

**_Well you're in my head and you didn't know not to say, "Would you like to fornicate?" so excuse me if I'm a little confused on what exactly you're aware of._ **

Instead of answering, Dean pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out the condom, then stepped off the bed and slipped out of his jeans and boxers.

He ripped open the wrapper and slipped the condom on, then climbed back onto the bed and glided it against Cheryl's slick entrance.

**_Kiss her._ **

_Why?_

**_Can't you feel her wanting it? You can feel everything else she wants._ **

Dean felt a touch of confusion at the edges of his mind. Instead of Cas responding directly, he relayed the abstract thought of focusing too much on _nether regions_. The phrase flitted through Dean's head and he chuckled inwardly.

Cas, as Dean, bent down and kissed Cheryl softly, which was exactly what she wanted, slow and sensual and teasing while she enjoyed her afterglow. Dean continued gliding against her entrance, each time pressing the tip of his cock slightly into her before moving up to rub against her clit, over and over, until she was panting again and Dean could feel the beginnings of yet another orgasm building in her.

"Fuck me," she gasped out, and Dean loved that there was no guesswork here, he loved that he could _feel_ that she wanted it, but she wanted it to build and build and build, and that she also wanted to _tell him_ when he could fuck her, so that when he finally pressed inside her, she almost came again.

Dean sat up and angled his hips in such a way that the tip of his cock was hitting her g-spot, her knees hooked over his shoulders. He thrust into her repeatedly until she was shivering with the need to come again, with some friction to her clit, so Dean wrapped her legs around his waist and circled his thumb over it in light strokes.

He could feel his own orgasm stirring, a burning coil at the base of his spine, but Cas kept the beast at bay somehow, kept Dean's desires separate from Cheryl's pleasure, and Dean didn't know how the dude could manage such a task when he wasn't even sure that Cas was deriving any pleasure at all from this. All Dean could feel from Cas's grace was the same intense concentration with which he had studied the tome in the basement of the bookstore.

It was like Cas was fucking both of them, and it was so fucking _hot_ that if Dean had his own body and Cas had his old vessel, there was no doubt in Dean's mind he'd want to go to town on Jimmy fucking Novak, just to see what it would feel like to take Cas apart.

 _That_ got Cas's attention.

_You would? I thought you were... heterosexual._

**_Now is not the time to be having this conversation, Cas._ **

_It's not a—_

**_GODDAMMIT, just stay focused, I want another set of multiples before this night is over._ **

Cas continued the steady sweeps of his thumb over Cheryl's clit, unyielding, deep fucking into her tight, wet, hot cunt, and Dean completely let go, let himself enjoy the complexity of this whole situation, let himself think of all his fantasies at once, and who the fuck cared if Cas caught on to one or two or a dozen of the gayer ones.

Dean felt Cheryl want to change positions, so he pulled out, and she immediately got onto her knees, not even questioning how Dean knew she wanted it.

Dean plunged back into her, and she sat up so that his chest was flush against her back, then he placed one hand on her breast while the other kept at her clit, mercilessly pounding into her g-spot until her wetness leaked down his balls.

Fuck it all, this was the hottest fucking thing that ever happened in Dean's entire _life_.

And he'd literally been to hell.

Cheryl gasped and keened and reached behind her to cradle the back of Dean's head, so he bit and sucked and lapped at her shoulders and neck.

She climbed and climbed and climbed her next series of orgasms, forcing them all down in a way Dean knew dudes just _could not do_ , then Dean pinched a nipple while biting down on her neck, and everything released at once.

Cheryl fell onto her hands and ground back onto Dean, thrusting back with each intense wave of her orgasm, one rising as the other crested and fell, and Dean was so mentally _destroyed_ that he lost count of how many times she came. All he could feel were her orgasms hit over and over, her walls pulsing onto his dick, squeezing it at just the right spot, until he felt himself let out a cry as he came too, orgasm perfectly timed with her last climax, grinding ferociously into her until at last it was all over.

Dean was physically and mentally _obliterated,_ but he got the distinct impression from Cas's grace that he wanted another round or two or ten.

God, angels were so  _needy_ _._

Dean slipped out of her and pulled off the condom to throw in the trash can by the bed, then lay down next to Cheryl, who had collapsed on her side, panting.

Dean could feel Cas sever the mental connection, and it was just the two of them again, sharing one brain, and thankfully Dean was too exhausted to think about whether or not that was awkward.

_Dean, as... enlightening as this has been, I've won the bet and now we need to leave._

**_No one likes a guy who doesn't even cuddle, even badasses like Cheryl. Just give me five minutes._ **

Cas didn't reply, but Dean felt him relinquish control of Dean's body, so he wrapped an arm around Cheryl's waist and pulled her in, reveling in the strawberry smell of her shampoo and the feel of her warm body against his.

Dean didn't get his five minutes, because he fell asleep in two.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I don't have any notes for this chapter. That's not a good sign.

_There was fire everywhere, both in space and time._

_Fire took his mother and his home._

_Fire was the chemical reaction needed to let loose the bullets that left Dean's hands bloodied with guilt._

_Fire dragged him into hell._

_And fire was what consumed him._

_He was in his old bedroom back in Lawrence, four years old, clutching Boo, his teddy bear he'd gotten on his first birthday, aptly named because that was the first word he had uttered upon unwrapping the package with chubby little hands. "Boo!" he'd cried, and everyone cooed and clapped. Dean hugged his teddy bear to his chest and cried whenever anyone tried to take her away._

_He held her all the time until Sammy was born, and the only time he could ever part with her was when Sammy cried. Dean put Boo in his baby brother's lap sometimes, or his crib, or his bassinet. When he fell asleep, he would take Boo back and thank her for helping Sammy._

_Now, he held Boo out of desperation as the fire grew all around him. He screamed for his mother and father, but no one came. He was scared for them and for Sammy because he didn't know where they were, if they were in the same fire that surrounded him, if they knew it was even happening._

_He coughed and cried and sputtered, and shoved his face in Boo's chest to keep the smoke away, then shut his eyes tight, waiting for the pain to hit, waiting for the darkness._

_A fluttering disturbed the air around him, and Dean lifted his head to find he was no longer in his house. There was no more fire, no more smoke. He looked around._

_He was on a dock overlooking a lake. The air was crisp and smelled like autumn: smoke-tinged air, but in a way that didn't choke him. The trees surrounding the lake were the color of fire, but not the kind that burned. Rather, it was the kind that warmed and soothed. It was the fire that protected instead of destroyed._

_It was the essence of life instead of death._

_Dean stood on the dock and turned around, Boo still hugged tight to his chest._

_A man stood ten feet away, staring off into the distance. His expression was still and stoic, but the chill breeze ruffled his black hair and made his long trench coat sway against him._

_Dean approached him, hesitant and a little scared. "Do... do I know you?"_

_As though the man hadn't noticed Dean was there, he looked down at him and tilted his head. His eyes were bluer than the lake that surrounded them, and much deeper too. He squatted down to Dean's level and smiled, a small shift of the corners of his lips and eyes. "Yes, you do. My name is Castiel."_

_Dean furrowed his brow, rubbing at Boo's ear— a habit he picked up whenever he was confused— and asked, "Are you my guardian angel?"_

_Castiel smiled wider, warmer, white teeth and sparkling eyes, and replied, "That's exactly what I am, Dean," then he reached out and smoothed down Dean's hair. It was a soft, soothing touch, and it eased the tension in Dean’s shoulders._

_Dean looked down at his feet, clutched Boo closer to his face, breathing in the familiar smell of home, and mumbled, "Can I stay here? Just for a little bit, I mean. Back home is scary."_

_"Of course you can, Dean. You can stay here as long as you like."_

***

Dean awoke the next morning to the smell of bacon, the distinct sizzle of it cooking on a frying pan, then he became acutely aware that his eyes were already open and staring down at a stovetop.

It was actually kind of... _nice_ to wake up and not have the burden of maneuvering his own body, if not really fucking weird.

Though he didn't catch much of Cheryl's kitchen the night prior, he guessed that he was still in her apartment.

_Good morning._

**_Hey. Why are we still at Cheryl's? I thought you said we had to book it. And when did you learn how to make breakfast?_ **

_I didn't, but you do, so now I do._

**_That's... really confusing. What about the first question?_ **

Instead of an answer, he received the equivalent of a mental shrug, a sense of nonchalance with a buzzing around the edges, like Cas was trying to hide something.

**_What does that mean?_ **

_I spent the evening watching over your dreams._

Dean had no idea what that meant, because he couldn't remember having any dreams in the first place.

**_But what about the Devourers?_ **

_We'll be leaving shortly. They're nocturnal and dwell in sewers, so striking during the daytime would be best anyway._

Cas's essence swirled slowly around Dean's brain, more relaxed than it normally was, like he was content, maybe. Or pensive. Or something else Dean couldn't place.

For once, he decided to ask about it.

**_So... how are you feeling?_ **

Dean felt his stomach flip and his breath catch in his throat, a smile pull at the corners of his lips while a feeling of shy giddiness pressed at the back of his mind.

_I'm fine, thank you._

Sensitive to Cas's boundaries, he nudged at the angel's grace, pushing against it, not inspecting it, but mentally caressing it, like letting water from a stream flow through his fingers.

The smile on his lips widened as Cas’s grace swirled affectionately around him.

A brief flicker of an image crossed his mind: Cas’s old vessel at the stove making eggs while Dean approached him from behind and wrapped his arms around his waist, kissing his shoulders and smiling—

Then the image was immediately retracted, like those kinds of thoughts always were, but Dean was getting better at picking up on when it would happen, the electric current of Cas’s grace right before he was about to have one of his thought-spikes which he hid. It was like Cas had no control over them but to maintain the damage when they happened.

Dean’s curiosity was piqued, the lazy rolling around of Cas’s grace in his mind a sign that maybe the angel had momentarily let his guard down.

**_So did you have fun last night?_ **

Dean could feel Cas search his mind for _'fun'_ to put it in context. A number of memories flitted across his consciousness: playing GI Joes with Sammy in the back of the Impala, fireworks on the Fourth of July, the feel of wind in his hair and loud rock music blaring while driving down the open road, beating Sam at pool, dancing at clubs he'd never admit to anyone that he actually liked, reading a good book for the first time... the list continued, and Dean felt warmth spread in his chest.

He wasn't sure if it was Castiel or himself who caused it. Maybe it was both of them.

_Yes. I believe I did have fun._

A smile pulled at his lips again while he reached into a cabinet to get down some plates, and for the hell of it, Dean continued Cas’s thought process which he previously redacted, vividly playing out feeling his way down Cas’s hipbones and teasing the elastic of his boxers, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the back of his neck, nibbling at the shell of his ear as he reached down further and stroked Cas’s cock with his fingertips.

Dean’s body gasped and dropped the plate, but Dean himself was prepared for that to happen and caught it before it crashed.

He chuckled smugly to himself.

**_Yeah, I had fun too._ **

Before Cas could think up a snarky reply, a loud yawn from behind him caught his attention.

“Wasn’t expecting you to stick around,” Cheryl said.

Dean turned around as she approached him. She wore nothing but his t-shirt and a pair of underwear, and the sight made his heart ache with something he couldn’t describe; the simple domesticity of it all, a woman he admired and adored swimming in one of his worn-out old shirts, smiling up at him as he made her breakfast. It was the kind of life Dean always wanted, but so rarely let himself dream about.

Dean took the wheel back from Cas and stepped forward to kiss Cheryl in response, deep and sweet and perfect. He trailed his lips down to her neck and murmured, “I can’t stay long. Just thought I’d cook up some breakfast for you before I left.”

She smiled again, coy and relaxed. “Well aren’t you just something else.”

Dean broke apart and looked into her sharp gray eyes. He wanted to remember this moment, store it away when the dark thoughts came back, so he could pull it out of his back pocket when the going got rough, when Cas left him again and broke down the wall keeping Dean sane, the dark thoughts flooding his mind once more.

“You could say that,” Dean replied, a wide, crooked smile across his face.

An ugly feeling Dean knew all too well pressed into his consciousness. It was so strong, he had to stifle the sharp breath that threatened to escape him.

**_Dude. Are you... jealous?_ **

Cas didn’t respond.

**_C’mon, man. Don’t chicken out on me again._ **

Still nothing.

Dean sighed inwardly.

**_Suit yourself._ **

He ignored the decidedly empty feeling of Cas’s lack of presence in his mind, and enjoyed his breakfast with Cheryl.

***

The moment the lock clicked on Cheryl's door after they said their goodbyes, Dean was immediately transported elsewhere.

**_I hate when you do that._ **

_We're running out of time, Dean. I let you have your fun, but now we need to get to work._

Dean looked around and sighed.

Monsters never hid in loft apartments or breweries or anything cool like that.

It was always the fucking sewers.

**_Where's Sammy?_ **

_I already answered this question, Dean. I don't know unless he prays._

**_We have a fucking cell phone._ **

Cas ignored him and propelled Dean's body forward, crouched down and stepping carefully in the small space.

**_We should really get some back-up here, Cas._ **

_I'm a celestial being. I think I can handle it._

**_Seriously? You already got your ass handed to you once by this thing._ **

_That was... an error on my part._

**_An error how?_ **

Cas uploaded a memory to Dean of the warehouse from the first Devourer run-in. He'd sensed Dean was in trouble, which was only exacerbated by the fact that another seal was about to be broken. As Cas maneuvered through the hallways at the back the warehouse, a Devourer blindsided him and shredded Jimmy's essence away in an instant.

**_How did it get a one-up on your angel mojo?_ **

_That's what I was trying to research. It appears that perhaps the Devourer that stole my vessel's essence is some kind of... higher being. Imbued with additional intelligence and strength._

**_So like the queen from_ Aliens _._**

Cas had to search Dean's mind to understand the reference.

 _Yes, like the queen from_ Aliens _, but with less webbing. We also lack both cargo loaders and flamethrowers with which to destroy it._

**_Brute force, then._ **

_Yes, brute force._

Dean, controlled by Cas, made his way through the tunnels until he heard a soft scraping sound twenty yards ahead, along with heavy, even breathing.

**_Is that it?_ **

Too deeply concentrated to respond concretely, Dean edged forward until the tunnels merged together into a large, empty chamber.

Empty, of course, but for the massive, slimy beast asleep in the center of it.

**_Okay, so how do we get your essence back?_ **

_We take it._

**_Seriously? That's your genius plan? We go up to this thing that almost killed you, and grab that tiny ball of light in the center of its goddamn chest cavity?_**

_Yes._

 

**_Talk about cocky. Damn, you angels have no sense of self-preservation._ **

Cas's grace tittered in irritation, but Dean continued forward, circling around the beast, figuring out the best way to grab back his essence.

**_You have got to be kidding me._ **

_Please let me concentrate, Dean._

Dean circled around to its front and squatted down. Jimmy's essence glowed bright cobalt blue and moved faster as Dean approached.

The Devourer slept much like a human, curled onto its side, with its arms protecting its chest. Its eyelids were closed and its jaw was clamped shut, sharp teeth overlapping thin lips. Shredded flesh hung off of its limbs and it stank of rotted carcass.

Dean picked up its wrist, mostly bone but for exposed tendons and muscle leading down to webbed claws which were as sharp as knives.

Slowly, Dean reached into the open chest cavity and held out his hand for the essence to attach itself to.

The second the ball of light glided across his fingers, the beast flexed, and the next moment, it was holding onto Dean by the throat and standing, bringing Dean's body with it, picking him up from the ground.

Dean, even with his angelic strength, couldn't climb out of its grasp. He clawed at the beast's arm, but it was utterly unaffected.

With one last burst of might, Dean swung his body forward and kicked the Devourer's knee inward.

The beast shrieked and dropped him to the ground. Dean was dazed but Cas was back up like a shot, taking the opportunity of the Devourer's imbalance to shove his hand into its chest cavity and grab the essence floating inside.

The moment he grabbed it, Dean felt like his body was on fire. Worse, it felt like his soul was on fire. Like something was being ripped out of him. He struggled to breathe, and he could barely feel the physical lacerations that the beast caused him as his hand held on tight to the essence which was apparently destroying him from the inside.

**_Cas, man, what's happening._ **

_I almost have it, Dean._

**_I don't think you do. I can't last much longer here. I feel like—_ **

Dean ripped the essence out of the Devourer's chest and it screamed. With a surge of power, it lunged at Dean again and caught him by the head, large hands grasping either side of his face as he bobbed back and forth, jaw opening impossibly wide.

Inside its gaping maw, it was pitch black, swirling nothingness that dazed Dean's attention and made him go slack against the monster's grip.

**_CAS. WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?_ **

Cas didn't respond.

He was gone. Again.

And so was the essence.

Cas deserted Dean to save himself.

That mother _fucker_.

The Devourer tore into Dean, and this time, Dean could feel every cut, every bruise, every broken bone that it caused him. The burning feeling at his core grew more intense by the moment as the Devourer shredded his essence away from him, bit by bit. It was agonizing in a way Dean had never felt. He fought vainly against him until his limbs were of no use, and all he could do was take his beating, just like he did in hell for forty years.

It was hopeless.

Thankfully, unlike in hell, he eventually blacked out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn. This was harder to write than the hivemind hetsmut.

Dean awoke to the most horrific physical pain he'd ever felt. Before he opened his eyes, he was convinced yet again that he was in hell, on the rack, taking his eternal punishment and listening to Alastair's endless, maniacal laughter as he lashed into Dean's soul with delight.

He became aware of a soft surface underneath him, his head resting on a pillow, the cool breeze and low hum of an air conditioning unit to his left.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

Dean could barely move, but a brief scope of his surroundings led him to believe he was in a motel room. It was dark, and he was apparently naked.

How exactly Dean went from being devoured by an aptly-named monster to lying naked on a lumpy motel room mattress and writhing in pain, he had no idea.

His arm moved against his will, and reached up to touch a cut on his forehead.

The pain there disappeared.

His fingers trailed down and touched every cut and bruise and broken piece of him, and with each light, feathery touch, the pain went away.

After a few moments, Dean lay back against the pillows and sighed in relief, letting his eyes flutter closed. Several moments later, when he regained his composure, he opened his eyes, and asked aloud, "Cas?"

_I'm here._

Dean's only response was pure resentment.

_I'm sorry._

He closed his eyes and tried to calm his nerves, relax his mind so he could go to sleep.

_I didn't abandon you, Dean._

**_The fuck you didn't._ **

_I had to get the essence back where it belonged. I was only gone for a moment._

**_Yeah well, the queen alien did a fuck-ton of damage in that moment._ **

_I know. I returned you to safety and healed you as fast as I could._

**_Why are you still here? Isn't your vessel back in all its trench-coated, blue-eyed glory?_ **

_The process takes time. Jimmy has been deceased for a number of days. That kind of healing isn't immediate._

**_So I'm still your truck stop. Great. Well if you don't mind, I'm gonna try to get some sleep, and hopefully by the time I wake up, you'll be gone._ **

_Dean..._

**_We're done here, Cas._ **

Dean felt an intense wave of frustration and what felt like anguish pulse through his mind.

Then, like a dam being broken, all the things that Cas had hid from him while they shared the same brain came flooding into his consciousness.

Dean looked down at himself in hell, tied up and screaming for help. He saw his soul, a speck of light in the darkness. He felt the pull of it like a magnet, spiraling downward into the pit to save that tiny light which was quickly fading.

He saw himself in diners smiling, laughing, a happy glint in his eye while the sun either rose or set, light streaking through the cheap blinds on wide windows advertising weekly specials.

He felt himself clutched on for dear life as he rose from perdition, screaming, fading soul alight with a renewed vigor like a bonfire inside of him, swirling upward into cool, welcoming daylight.

He heard himself grunt and groan as he fought his way through monsters under the metaphorical beds of innocent people. He took beating after merciless beating, always standing back up, always throwing himself back in the fray, always asking for more. He was relentless, one hand holding down the pin of a grenade that he would always be willing to pull, even if it meant destroying himself.

Dean took it all in, the images from Cas’s perspective washing over him, like watching home movies without knowing that the man behind the camera even existed.

He had no idea what to say. Or think. Or feel. All of the memories were tinged with this… _feeling_ , this rosy-colored affection that he couldn't put his finger on.

There was a distinct silence in his head, a hesitance while Cas let Dean digest everything he just uploaded. 

Finally, Dean understood.

**_Why is the Grand Canyon in your grace, Cas?_ **

_Because I created it._

**_What about space?_ **

_What you saw was the Pleiades star cluster. I created that as well._

Dean paused for a moment.

**_And what about me?_ **

Cas’s grace swirled in his head in the same, tense way people avert their eyes and scratch the backs of their necks when they’re nervous.

_I put your soul back together. I reconstructed you from ashes._

**_So your grace is filled with… things you’re proud of?_ **

The nervous fluttering continued.

_So to speak, yes._

**_Okay, so clarify for me then._ **

Dean could feel a pause while Cas constructed a way to describe it, reduce it in a way Dean's human brain could comprehend.

_My grace is my life force, in much the way your blood is yours. You’re made up of DNA, tiny pieces of genetic lineage. I’m made up of my feats, the reasons I was put into being. My… accomplishments, as you called them, are like my DNA._

**_So you’re saying you were put into existence to save me from hell._ **

_In a manner of speaking, yes._

**_And you’re also saying that in doing that, I became part of you._ **

More nervous swirling, faster, like tapping his foot or wringing his hands.

_Yes._

**_So you’re not just using me as some kind of weapon to stop the apocalypse. I mean something to you. Personally._ **

_Yes, Dean, you do. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand._

**_No, you’ve been trying to get me to understand that I’m important in the grand scheme of things. You never told me that I’m important to_ you _._**

_Well, you are._

Dean let that sink in. Important in the big picture? Never. Important to the guy floating around in his consciousness for lack of a better place to be? That could make sense.

**_But why did you hide it from me?_ **

Cas mentally sighed.

_It was never relevant to discuss. When I started using your body as a vessel, and you found it on your own, it… I was…_

**_You were shy about it._ **

Cas didn’t confirm nor deny that with a concrete thought, but the anxious buzzing of his grace in Dean’s head was confirmation enough.

Cas had _feelings_ for Dean. Ones that were strong enough and conflicting enough that it was important that he hid them away in the duration of time he was in Dean’s body.

But now that the dam was broken, he could feel them all, in a sense. It was confusing because he couldn’t piece together what was his own and what was Cas’s, or if there was a difference between them at all, because, really, how could he _not_ have some kind of emotional bond with the being that dragged him out of hell?

Dean was always kind of an idiot when it came to his own emotions, but when they were running rampant next to someone else’s, his feelings were kind of hard to ignore.

Still, the dude left him high and dry at the fingertips of a goddamn monster.

**_This doesn’t fix anything, you know. You still abandoned me._ **

The thought had less of an edge to it, though, Dean’s anger having slowly abated in the crumbling of the divide between their—for lack of a better way to think of it—hearts.

_But I came back for you. I would never leave you, Dean. I’m sorry you took so much… damage in the short interim I was gone._

**_What, did you forget that I’m made up of normal human stuff? Flesh and bones and all that?_ **

A quick image flitted across his mind, of himself, the night prior, the way he looked in bed with Cheryl from her perspective, the intense wave of lust that crashed over him in that moment.

Cas had hidden it at the time, but now it was back, the intense, physical attraction he felt toward Dean; a fierce possessiveness, a desire to give him every sense of pleasure the world could offer, a  _need_ to find a way to show Dean his affections in a way he could understand.

_No, I don’t think I could forget a thing like that._

Dean blinked.

Did Cas just... _flirt_ with him?

Without Dean's control, his hand trailed down lightly over his hipbones, and he gasped.

_May I?_

His fingertips glided up his body gently and sent shivers down his spine. They stopped at a nipple and flicked it. His gasp came out as a sharp exhale, a small whine at the back of his throat as Cas continued touching him with Dean's own hands.

**_Yeah, that's... keep doing that._ **

Dean closed his eyes and Cas sent him images, fantasies of what he would be doing to Dean mirrored in his own actions.

When Dean ran his fingers over his lips, he imagined Cas's vessel straddling him, kissing him. He threaded his fingers in his hair, thinking of Cas reaching up and doing the same, pulling a little and exposing his throat, which he covered with kisses and small bites, crawling downward to Dean's chest.

Dean was already rock hard and leaking, the intensity of the situation resounding inside of him as Cas controlled his body and his pleasure, surges of angelic power pulsing through him and making his own touch feel electric on his skin.

He ran a hand over the length of his dick, the soft touch making him arch his back with want as Cas continued depriving him of the solid grip he would have given himself by now, dragging his hand loose and steady over himself—

Cas's grace began swirling in his brain more fervently, and Dean smirked.

Apparently, Cas could be affected by what Dean thought of his own accord.

Dean didn't take the reins back of his own body, but he took his mind back, imagining Cas between his legs and sucking open-mouthed kisses onto his hipbones, trailing down until he licked a stripe up Dean's cock.

Dean let out a soft moan at the thought, and it definitely wasn't his.

He reached a hand up to his lips and sucked his fingers while his other hand dragged lazily over his cock, pooling cum over the tip and sliding it down, slicking himself with his own wetness.

With wetted fingers, he opened his legs and reached between them, circling around his entrance, and imagined Cas pumping Dean's dick with his hand while eating his ass out, and now Dean wasn't even sure whose thoughts belonged to whom anymore. It was all a hazy mess of snippets and images and thoughts and feelings and _want_.

Dean felt the rise of heat in his stomach as he pressed a single finger into himself, opening his legs wider and imagining Cas's strong, deft hands prepping him, fucking him open while Dean panted and writhed beneath him, begging for more.

He slipped a second finger in and crooked them upward, hitting his prostate and arching off the bed again, crying out in pleasure.

When he added a third finger, he continued massaging his own prostate, his other hand jacking himself in time with the thrusts of his own fingers, and all he could think about were those stark blue eyes boring into his own as Cas pounded balls-deep inside him, Dean's legs wrapped around his waist and pulling him in deeper, pleading to fuck him harder and faster.

Dean was on the edge, teetering, but Cas had complete control of his body. He wouldn't let Dean come until he _wanted_ Dean to come, so he kept filling Dean's head with filthy images of that perfect pink mouth all over his body, of carding his hands through a mess of pitch black sex hair and pulling, biting and sucking hickeys onto the long line of Cas's neck. He imagined being bent over and tied up, gagged, slapped, and teased mercilessly. He imagined being fucked in public, being fucked on kitchen countertops, in airplane bathrooms, on and inside the Impala. He imagined being on his knees and taking Cas into his mouth to the hilt, swallowing him down and staring up at him to see this divine being come apart above him.

Cas kept Dean at the edge, holding him over it, not willing to let him drop. His body was wound tight like the string of an instrument, and Cas was fine-tuning it, waiting for the perfect moment as Dean continued fucking himself with his own hands, whining and keening and panting silent pleas for Cas to let him come.

As Dean was on the verge of blacking out again, he let go of his own dick and thrust onto his prostate once more, falling over the edge and cresting with a cry as he arched off the bed and held himself in his fist once more.

But he didn't actually  _come_. _  
_

Before he could be confused about that, his hand was loosely jerking himself again, still hard, still leaking, so sensitive it almost hurt, and a second orgasm ripped through his body. He gasped and bit his lip to keep from screaming, stars behind his eyes erupting, and before he could recover from the second, a third hit him, and this time he came, hard, white hot streaks coating his neck and chest and stomach.

He didn't even know if he was making noise anymore. He couldn't think his own thoughts. Everything was bliss as his body rode wave after wave of an orgasm that just _did not seem to end_ , and he continued coming, stroking himself through it until he thought he might die from the sensation alone.

The waves finally ended with a few small stutters of his hips, and he cleaned himself up with the t-shirt that was lying at the end of the bed.

Utterly fucking spent, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

The cabin in the mountains was waiting for him behind his eyelids, but this time, Cas was in bed too.

**_Don't think this makes up for anything._ **

Cas smiled in his mind's eye, and lifted the covers so that Dean could crawl in bed next to him.

Dean fell asleep in their safe place, imaging Cas holding him, no dark tendrils of thoughts to be found, only the bittersweet feeling of knowing that Cas would be gone from his mind soon, but a fleeting sense of hope that once he got back in his vessel, they could continue whatever it was that was happening between them.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to update! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the potentially-exciting conclusion of this fic! 
> 
> Feedback is of course welcome, and because I don't say it enough: I love you all!

“Dean.”

Dean awoke to… darkness.

After a moment, he realized it was because his eyes were closed.

It was amazing how quickly he had become accustomed to returning to consciousness to find his body already up and moving around, so when he stirred and grumbled at the interruption to his sleep, it felt out of place.

“Dean, wake up.”

A hand on his shoulder shook him gently.

He wasn’t ready to move yet, or get up and face the day, or night, or whatever the hell time it was.

“Leave me alone, Cas, I’m trying to sleep,” he grumbled, swatting away at the hand on his shoulder.

The _hand_ on his _shoulder_.

And the rough, deep voice saying his name.

Dean bolted upright and stared into the familiar blue eyes of Castiel’s vessel, looking down at Dean with urgency, clad in his rumpled suit and trench coat, as though he hadn’t spent the better part of the last several days inside Dean’s body. “Cas? Where did you...? How did you…?”

After scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Dean noticed that Castiel was paler than usual, cheeks and eyes sunken. He looked sick and tired and weak. Without thinking, he reached up and touched the side of Cas’s face, traced his sharp cheekbone with his thumb. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Dean. Sam prayed to me while you were sleeping, so I reentered my vessel before it was fully healed. He’s gone after the Devourer on his own. I need your assistance.”

Dean, heart hammering in his chest, rolled swiftly out of bed and pulled his pants on.

“We don’t have time for that, Dean, we have to go now.”

“Dude, I’m not going into battle naked—"

Before Dean could finish his sentence, Cas grabbed his shoulder. When Dean blinked his eyes open, he was staring up at his warped reflection in a yellow mirror.

At least Cas had the decency to zap Dean’s clothes back on.

Dean blinked again and looked around to find he was staring at the visor of a… space suit.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked, looking around for Cas.

“The Cincinnati Natural History Museum,” Cas replied, walking past Dean down a darkened exhibit hallway.

Dean was used to abandoned warehouses, ancient cemeteries, and haunted mansions, but this was definitely the first time he’d ever ended up in a science museum. They passed glass cases of bugs and shards of bone and rocks, walking swiftly down the corridor. The museum was obviously closed, so Dean kept an eye out for wandering guards.

“Why is a Devourer hanging out in a natural history museum?” Dean asked in a harsh whisper.

Cas stopped at a set of double doors and replied, “There must be something here it needs.”

“And Sam is here?”

“According to his prayer, yes.” Cas pushed open the set of doors, which swung back to reveal a laboratory of sorts, an enormous room filled with shelves covered in artifacts and equipment.

There was a scuffling sound near the back of the room, and Dean took the gun out from the small of his back—thankful that Cas had obviously been paying attention to the finer details of Dean’s daily attire—the warm metal of the handle soothing in his hand.

It struck him, in the absence of Cas’s grace, that Dean had always felt more at peace on the precipice of danger, with a weapon in his hand, than anywhere else.

It probably said a lot about him, but he didn’t have time to consider that at the moment.

As they approached the back of the room, the scuffling turned into grunts and groans and the dull thud of large slabs of meat being hit with a baseball bat. Dean and Cas rounded a corner of shelves to find Sam, against a wall, lifted completely off his feet by an enormous hand strangling him at the neck. The Devourer loomed over him, jaw parted wide, sucking in an ethereal mist from Sam’s face as Sam struggled and sputtered, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Next to Sam was an enormous, swirling circle on the wall, bright white light emitting from it. It made a noise like a wind tunnel, and felt like a magnet. Dean had to clench his fist to keep from wandering closer to it.

Ignoring whatever the hell it was, Dean instead lifted his gun and fired two shots into the Devourer. One landed in its shoulder, and the other in the middle of its back.

The bullets, apparently, had no effect on the beast.

Sam choked out, “Close… the portal, Dean. It’s stronger… with it open…”

“What the hell is that thing?” Dean asked, unable to refrain from being transfixed by the swirling light.

“A portal to heaven,” Cas replied, running down an aisle and frantically grabbing items off of shelves. “The Devourer is trying to gain access to the angels in order to break the seal.” He ran back and dumped several items onto a desk. “Distract it from stealing Sam’s essence while I make a sigil.”

Dean could do that. Survival mode was easy.

He yanked himself away from the pull of the portal and threw caution to the wind—as per usual— jumping onto the back of the Devourer, putting its giant, slimy heady in a headlock. His feet were off the ground as the beast made a loud wailing noise and dropped Sam, who slumped to the floor and passed out.

Giant hands clawed at Dean’s forearm, and he held on for dear life. The Devourer sliced and scratched through the leather of his jacket, piercing his skin. It hurt like a bitch, but Dean clenched his jaw, shut his eyes, and held on for dear life.

The Devourer turned around and slammed Dean into the brick wall behind them. The back of his skull crashed into the wall and he saw stars. Cursing loudly, he wished that Cas was still in his head to make all the pain go away.

Then again, the pain was real, more real than anything else, and he appreciated it for that.

“You almost done?” Dean called, voice clipped as the beast grunted and struggled against him, right before smashing them into the wall again. It took the wind out of him, and his vision blurred at the edges.

“Almost,” Cas replied, voice steady, bordering on casual, like he was giving the goddamn weather report. Dean could see him take a knife and slice his palm, dripping a large quantity of blood into a wooden bowl while he chanted something in a language Dean didn’t recognize.

The contents of the bowl lit up, the bright light reflected in Castiel's eyes, then faded. Cas dipped his hands in the mixture, then walked over to the wall next to the steadily-growing portal, and drew a sigil from memory.

The Devourer bent forward abruptly, throwing Dean off of its back.

Dean braced himself as well as he could for the fall, landing roughly on his shoulder and rolling out of it. Somewhere along the line, he dropped his gun. Standing up quickly, head spinning, he searched the ground for his gun to no avail, and was interrupted by a sharp gasp.

He looked up to find the Devourer yanking Cas back by the collar of his trench coat to keep from completing the sigil. It spun Cas around and picked him up by the waist, then threw him over its shoulder and jumped into the portal.

"No!" Dean screamed, picking up the large knife Cas had used to slice his palm. He ran to the portal, which was shrinking rapidly, and hesitated, staring at Sam still slumped on the ground. "Sorry, Sammy," he muttered before jumping head-first into the swirling light.

Dean landed on the same shoulder onto which the Devourer had thrown him— of fucking _course_ — and groaned as he rolled out of the inertia.

As he stood, he looked around him: grass underfoot, blue sky above, pine trees and mountains in the distance. There was no portal back to the museum, and reality, to be found.

Dean picked up the knife that had fallen from his grasp and clutched his aching shoulder with his other hand. "Cas?" he called out into the apparent wilderness.

Ahead of him and down the hill, smoke was billowing. He followed it, and after a few yards, spotted a cabin in the distance.

He stopped and blinked. It looked familiar, but he couldn't place it.

Hesitantly, he approached it, and peered into the bay window facing the mountains.

He saw... himself.

A strong arm was wrapped around his waist, and he turned over to face the other man, who perched up on his elbow and smiled down at him.

It was Cas.

Something inside Dean's chest ached at the sight in front of him. He had no idea where he was or how an alternate version of himself was lying in bed with Cas, now kissing each other, soft and chaste between smiles. Gradually, the kiss built into something more heated. Cas ran a hand down Dean's chest and dipped it under the covers, smirking as Dean's back arched off his bed, face contorted in pleasure.

Dean clenched his jaw and gripped the knife tight in his hand. He looked away, leaning against the wall of the cabin, struggling to breathe.

This was Alistair's doing.

It had to be.

It was _sick_ , forcing Dean to watch this— himself, _happy_ — in another reality he could never find, because Dean was a broken man, tortured to the point of torturing in return. This was Alastair's way of telling him he didn't deserve the scene in front of him.

Everything was a lie.

A rustling sound to his left took him out of his reverie, and he followed the noise, hearing cracks of twigs and loud grunting.

In a clearing amidst the pine trees, Dean found Cas wielding a large tree branch. He shoved it into the open ribcage of the Devourer, who roared and reached forward to crack the branch in half, sending Cas flying across the clearing.

"Cas!" Dean yelled, running over to him.

The Devourer ignored Dean, and walked over to Cas to pick him up by the throat, jaw widening obscenely as it began to suck Castiel's essence from his body for the second time.

"Hey!" Dean shouted, rushing to the Devourer and jabbing it in the back with the knife.

It wailed, but didn't drop Cas, didn't stop the steady stream of essence flowing into its mouth.

Dean pulled the knife out, and again, jumped on its back.

The beast continued wailing, but refused to let Cas go. Cas was steadily succumbing to the power of it, eyes fluttering shut and body slumping in the Devourer's grip.

Dean fit his fist over the bottom lip of its massive mouth and yanked upward with one hand while shoving the knife up into the bottom of its jaw with the other.

Finally, the stream of essence stopped, flooding back into Castiel, and the beast dropped him.

Dean pulled the knife out and shoved it in again and again, feeling the hot ooze of blood seep over his hands and arms.

At last, the Devourer fell to its knees and crumbled forward, rolling Dean off its back. It groaned once and twitched before lying still and silent.

Dean, breath taken out of him, lie on his back staring at the stark blue sky above him.

There was grass under his head and underneath his fingers, a chill breeze over his face. In the distance, he'd be willing to put money down that Cas was fucking him into the mattress in their mountain view cabin.

He groaned as he rolled over and stood, picking the knife up from the ground, staring down at the beast that lie dead at his feet.

He kicked it once for good measure, to make sure it was indeed dead, before walking across the clearing to Cas, who was on his side, knocked unconscious.

Dean knelt down in front of him, and wiped his bloodied hand in the grass before caressing the side of Cas's face. "Cas? Hey, Cas, buddy, c'mon, we need to get out of here."

Cas stirred and opened his eyes, blinking away the fog, and looked up at Dean. "Dean?"

Dean smiled and combed his fingers through Cas's hair. "Hey, man. You okay?"

Sitting up, Cas rubbed his throat. "Yes. I'm fine."

"Essence still intact?" Den asked.

Castiel nodded, then looked over at the body of the Devourer on the ground a few feet away. "There are still more of them out there, trying to take angel essence and break the seal."

Dean patted Cas on the back. "Yeah, well, we got a lot of seals ahead of us to deal with, too. We stopped this guy, and that's what counts."

They sat in silence for a moment, until Dean asked, "Where are we?"

"Heaven," Cas replied, looking down at his hands, and added, quietly, "My heaven."

Dean nodded. There was no use pretending he didn't understand. He felt it inside of him, a nameless feeling he had toward the being who pulled him from his own misery. It was inescapable, inevitable, eternal. He didn't need to say anything about their alternate selves in the cabin. He knew Cas knew they were there, smiling at each other and sharing intimate touches in the peace of their little world.

Dean also knew that Cas knew they could never have it. Their reality was so much darker, so much harsher than their beautiful surroundings. They would always have the apocalypse looming over their heads, always have death staring them down, always be at war with some great force. There would never be time for courtship or hand-holding or falling in love the Hollywood way. They had to make due with the hand they'd been dealt: watching one another's backs to save each other from the dark forces constantly whirling around them.

The worst part was that Dean still had his doubts. He was still unsure of the ground he walked on, if his perception was nothing more than an illusion given to him by Alastair to slowly drive him mad.

That was what hell really was, Dean decided: even in heaven, being given the seed of doubt that none of it was real, that he didn't deserve the peaceful environment which surrounded him; moreover, that he didn't deserve the angel by his side.

There was one force greater than Alastair, though. There was one thing Dean had grown to have more faith in than his own five senses.

After several minutes of staring at the mountains in the distance, Dean asked, voice barely above a whisper, "Is this real?"

Without looking over at him, Cas replied, "If you're asking if you're still in hell, you're not. I assure you, despite your trepidation on the topic, you deserved saving."

Dean didn't argue it this time. He sat on the grass, knees bent to his chest with his arms resting around them, and nodded.

"This place, however, is temporary," Castiel began, looking around them. "We need to leave and shut the portal so that the remaining Devourers won't be drawn to it."

Dean stood, and held out his hand for Cas to take. With a crooked grin that felt false even to him, he said, "Let's do it then."

Cas took it, and his lips twitched in an attempt to smile, standing and teleporting them back to the museum.

***

After a long, late evening of museum clean-up and getting Sam to a hospital— where he was fine, but reluctantly forced to stay overnight for observation because Cas was still too weak to do any healing— Dean checked into a motel as the sun was rising.

As soon as he got out of his pants and crashed backward onto the bed, he felt the fluttering of wings in the room. Without opening his eyes, he asked, "What, Cas?"

He felt shifting, a disturbance in the stale, air-conditioned atmosphere as Cas approached him.

Dean was too weary to open his eyes, too exhausted to figure out why Cas was there and why he wasn't speaking.

Soft, warm lips met his own, and Dean gasped, eyes opening wide.

Cas backed away an inch, staring down at Dean with icy blue eyes filled with longing and nervousness and apprehension, maybe something else behind them that Dean couldn't read. Dean hated that, not being able to feel Cas's grace bouncing around in his head. He hated having to speculate what Cas was feeling and thinking. He missed Cas being in his brain like he would miss a limb. It felt like a huge part of him was missing.

He needed to get closer. He needed...

Dean reached up, threading his fingers through the hair at the back of Cas's head, and pulled him in again, pressing their lips together. It was light, at first, teasing and simple and just a bit hesitant, but Dean sat up an inch, enough to get some leverage and bunch Cas's coat in his fist. Then he broke away for a moment to twist Cas down onto the bed with him and straddle him at the waist.

"Dean," Cas gasped, sitting up so that Dean could shove the coat and jacket off his shoulders.

Dean bit and sucked at his bottom lip, unknotting his tie and threading it out from under his collar before swiftly unbuttoning the rest of his shirt.

As he un-tucked the tails of Cas's shirt from his pants, Cas grabbed his wrists, and said, "Dean, wait."

Dean stopped, fingers still in the waistband of Cas's pants.

"Are you... sure you want this?" Cas asked, eyebrows raised.

Dean searched Castiel's eyes, impossibly bright, and even though he missed Cas in his head, he missed being able to look at Cas too. He missed his eyes and lips and touch, the strong, stable body at his side, at his beck and call with just a prayer's notice.

Leaning down, Dean peppered Cas's jaw with kisses, murmuring, "I _need_ this, Cas. Need _you."_

Cas gasped again, and god, Dean never wanted those noises to stop, the whining, needy sounds, so human that it made Dean's heart wrench in his chest.

Dean unbuckled and unzipped the angel's pants while Cas thumbed at the hem of Dean's t-shirt, pulling upward and off of him in one swift movement. He liked Cas like this— weakened, vulnerable, open. He felt like they both stood on the same ground, staring at each other at eye-level instead of a man reaching down from above to pull Dean up. They were well-matched: one man broken beyond repair, the other broken but healing. It wouldn't always be this way, but right now it was perfect.

Cas sat up and wrapped his arms around Dean's back, then lifted him up to spin him around and lay him back down. Cas was between Dean's legs, hips pinning him to the bed, sitting up momentarily to pull his shirt off his shoulders and lean back down, kissing Dean again, this time without an ounce of hesitation, lips parting and sweeping his tongue into Dean's mouth. It was blissfully, finally skin against skin, Dean's rapid heartbeat thumping wildly against Cas's chest.

Trailing his lips down Dean's chin and neck, Cas hooked a thumb in Dean's boxers and pulled slightly. Dean arched his hips up so Cas could snake them down his legs and off, crawling back up to settle between them and look up at Dean expectantly.

Dean, lip bit between his teeth, nodded once, and a dark, hungry flare flickered across the angel's eyes as he ran them down Dean's body and landed at his cock, rock hard and leaking steadily onto his stomach. He kissed and licked at Dean's hipbones and down his inner thighs before coming back up and gently, barely sliding his tongue up the shaft of Dean's dick.

 _"Fuck."_ Dean bucked his hips up, but Cas, with slightly less superhuman strength than he normally possessed, held him down as he licked up once more. At last, he circled his tongue around the head of Dean's cock and swallowed him down in one smooth motion.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, tensing his abs to keep from trying to fuck Cas's face, threading his fingers into Cas's mess of hair and pulling slightly.

Cas groaned around his dick, eyes fluttering closed, and it was all Dean could do to keep from coming down his throat right then.

He lifted off for a moment to coat his fingers in saliva. Dean opened his legs wider, and Cas reached downward to circle them gently around his hole. He pressed a finger in, just to the first knuckle. Dean hissed inward through his teeth, appreciating the burn of the intrusion, and fighting the urge to fuck onto Cas's fingers, beg him to open him wider already so he can feel him inside, get as close as they can get in their pesky separate bodies.

Cas continued sucking Dean while pressing his finger in all the way and quickly adding another, scissoring him open with a kind of expertise Dean couldn't even fathom. 

A thought occurred to Dean. "Are you reading my mind right now?" he asked, voice panting and wrecked.

Cas added a third finger, and the entire world dissolved away in intense pleasure.

"No," Cas replied, "Would you like me to?"

Dean nodded, then cried out when Cas crooked his fingers up and grazed Dean's prostate.

 _"Fuck_ ," Dean said again, impulsively fucking himself onto Cas's fingers.

**_Lube. Duffel bag._ **

Cas pulled out and Dean felt agonizingly empty as the angel rummaged through his bag to find the tube of lubricant Dean kept on hand _just in case_.

Before climbing back onto the bed, Cas shed his pants and boxers and socks, then uncapped the lubricant and spread some onto his fingers while settling once more between Dean's legs.

He leaned over Dean while pushing two slicked fingers into him again, and lowered his head to give him a quick peck on the lips.

Dean gasped.

Everything doubled. He opened his eyes, and he could see himself through Cas's eyes, his own green ones blown wide with lust, and Cas's blue ones darkened with it. He could feel Cas's desire ripping through his body, could feel it strung tight, bordering on painful as his cock hung heavy between his legs.

Dean could feel Cas's grace swirling within Jimmy's body, healing itself, mending all the tears and distortions it encountered on its journey from body to body, into the grip of a merciless beast and back again. He could feel the dull, rapid thud of Cas's heart beating in his chest, his breath escaping from his lungs as he took Dean apart with careful hands.

Cas pulled out and slicked himself up with the remaining lube on his fingers.

_May I?_

Dean couldn't control the rampant swirling of his thoughts, but they came out as a needy plea, begging Cas to fill him as soon and as full as possible because he couldn't stand another moment without him.

Cas huffed a laugh, and Dean felt the blissful press of the head of the angel's cock against his hole from both his own perspective and Castiel's, nearly ripping him apart at the seams.

Cas bottomed out in one smooth thrust, the feeling of the tight heat of Dean's ass sheathing his cock along with the wonderful feeling of fullness, of completeness, of finally having Cas close enough.

The angel mirrored those sentiments back to Dean, leaning down and pressing their foreheads together, lying still inside of Dean as he adjusted to his girth.

**_Move. Fuck me, Cas. Please._ **

Cas pulled out and slammed back in, immediately angling his hips to slide across Dean's prostate, and the dual feeling of himself and Cas was mind-blowing. It was mind-obliterating, even, and Dean could no longer keep a physical check on himself. Heady noises escaped his throat, and he ground down further onto Cas's dick, begging and babbling for Cas to fuck him harder, deeper, faster.

He reached up and pulled Castiel down onto him so he could feel the slick slide of his dick pressed between their stomachs, smell the grace, like sunshine, radiating off of Cas's warm skin, the taste of it in his mouth as he bit down on the angel's beautifully freckled shoulders. Everything about this moment was so human, so simple but for the dual-mindedness, and even that felt natural after days of sharing his own brain with another being.

Cas fucked him hard and fast, breathing heavy against Dean's neck, impulsively kissing the line of his throat and gripping his hips tight to barrel into him deeper.

Dean felt both of their climaxes rise simultaneously, a fire burning at each of their cores, winding tight and mirroring back and forth, the feel of Cas's build-up making Dean hotter and vice versa.

**_Look at me._ **

Cas continued fucking Dean, but raised his head to meet Dean's eyes. It happened again; Dean could see himself and Cas, could _feel_ himself and Cas. They were one, like they had been in Dean's head, and the world was exactly as it should be: like Castiel's heaven, but within reach at each of their fingertips to have and hold when they needed it.

Both of their hearts jolted in their chests as they looked at one another, reaching the same conclusion at once that whatever it was happening between them was deeper and more important than anything else. The realization pushed them both over the edge. Dean came, hard, arching his back and crying out, spilling white hot ropes onto his stomach and chest, and Cas came inside of him with a sharp exhale, hips stuttering erratically as he filled Dean completely, never breaking eye contact.

They slowly came to a stop, and Cas slipped out of him, collapsing onto the bed.

Dean turned, and tangled their legs together, ignoring the mess between them to deal with later, because he couldn't stand to be without Castiel's touch with so much hanging in the air between them.

Cas severed their mental connection with another light kiss to Dean's lips, and Dean was left staring into Cas's eyes without gazing into his own in turn, seeing the entire history of heaven and hell and earth behind them.

They caught their breath together, in silence, staring at one another in the blissful peace of the moment.

Dean had no idea what the future held for him. He didn't know how many Devourers or seals were left. He had no idea how to stop the apocalypse.

But one thing was certain: he'd truly been saved from hell by the angel at his side, and everything would be okay, as long as Cas was with him.


End file.
